


Waxing Lyrical

by flora_tyronelle



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, M/M, R/S 24 Hour Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 00:34:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flora_tyronelle/pseuds/flora_tyronelle
Summary: Tale as old as time, featuring Remus J. Lupin as a candlestick.





	Waxing Lyrical

**Author's Note:**

> 24 hour challenge prompt! In the ballroom, with a candlestick and the word "peacock". Thanks for such a great prompt Chromat1cs!

It was very late. Snow fell beyond the great glass windows, catching the candlelight like a flock of shining starlings where it flurried in through the broken panes. Remus felt tired- tired beyond spark or match or flame. He was burning very dim. The tattered peacock drapes hanging from the vaulted ceiling fluttered in the winter wind. He tried very hard to remember the time when they had been whole and beautiful, but found it was beyond him.

“Hello, Remus.”

Lost in brooding, Remus had not heard the heavy tread of footsteps behind him. He knew who it was, though, and did not turn around.

“Sirius.” Even his voice began to sound more metallic, creaking with the weight of the years. “What brings you down here?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Sirius said, “You’re moping again.”

Remus gave a dignified sniff, even as his heart seemed to crumple. “Somebody has to do it.”

Sirius let out a curious kind of growl, which Remus knew to be a wry laugh. He suddenly remembered how Sirius had laughed _before_ , but found the knowledge to be a wound rather than a balm. It pierced him right through. The light dimmed ever further.

“ _I_ do plenty of moping,” Sirius announced, as though he could not see the flames sputtering lower, “your services are not required. And I should have known you’d be… _waxing_ lyrical.”

A small spark spat onto the stone steps where the two of them sat, perched on the edge of the dais. Sirius let out another chuckling growl. Remus could feel his dignity slipping.

“That wasn’t funny.” But Remus could feel himself warming in spite of the circumstances. Snow. Unbreakable enchantment. His greatest friend transfigured into a beast. His own body warped into the shape of a candlestick. How could something as simple as a pun cheer him when nothing else could?

“It was and you know it,” Sirius chided. “Look, you’re burning brighter.”

“All the better to see you with, my Prince.” Remus could taste the mourning laced through those last, short words. In their human lives, they had shared such closeness. Now, he could barely remember Sirius’ face. One evening of childish, useless ignorance had doomed them all. _Until you wholeheartedly love another as deeply as you admire yourself_ , the enchantress had spoken, and here they were. The beast, the ballroom and the candlestick man. Years had passed and eroded them all. The truly infuriating thing was, he knew the Prince had changed! He was softer in some ways, stronger in others. He knew now the folly of pride. A kindness had come to him in their isolation. Yet nobody approached the castle anymore: it was as though the enchantress had erased all knowledge of it. Somebody would love him, Remus thought, and his heart squeezed painfully.

“I have been thinking on the enchantress’s words.” Sirius spoke into the vast, empty room, soft echoes of his warped voice calling back from the corners. “She said that the spell would lift when I could truly love another and be loved in return.”

Remus grimaced. “I remember. But there is only one petal left. Our time is almost spent.”

“Perhaps.”

Remus looked up at the beast. In the dim light, his expression was difficult to read. But his voice seemed both patient and laced with a restrained kind of anticipation. Something in his cold metal heart seemed to sniff the air, latching onto that same strange undercurrent. He asked a guarded question.

“Perhaps?”

Another beat of silence. The snow was piling up in a drift where the orchestra used to play. Empty, haunted arias seemed to float up to the ceiling in the suspended chill of the moment. Sirius, the beast, seemed to brace himself.

“I have come to realise, finally, the shape of my own heart. It has taken many years and many painful changes, but at last I know.”

Remus’ own heart ground to a halt. Dimly, he wondered- why was this? The beast continued speaking.

“I love you, Remus.” He said it simply, an immutable fact, a measured, thought-out conclusion; yet passion trembled in the space between his words. “I love you beyond form, for I did not understand what I felt until we were deeply under the enchantment of these alternate bodies. I love you unselfishly, unconditionally, whether you are sad or joyful or singing those terrible songs in the dining room. I love you beyond fear for my pride, because I know that you do not feel the same way-but the tiniest flicker of hope is enough to give me courage to speak. I am sorry for the fate to which I have cursed us. I am sorry I did not give you the chance at the life you wanted. I am sorry and I love you.”

Remus could not say how exactly he felt in those minutes that passed after Sirius’ speech faded into silence, even the echoes swallowed by shadows. His veins seemed to simmer. His heart had cracked. Something hot was flooding out, both comforting and searing, racing through him like wildfire. He felt… _Human_.

He knew Sirius, he suddenly realised. Knew him beyond shared revelry, beyond forced proximity, beyond mutual suffering and the ticking clock of doom. The shape of his own heart was finally coming into focus.

Thoughts of the curse fled his mind. The truth sang inside him, begging to be set free. Sirius’s craggy, hair-covered face was set in an expression of calm farewell. Remus opened his mouth and spoke.

“I love you, too. I love you, Sirius.”

The snowflakes began to rise, inexplicably, upwards. A note like that of a struck bell seemed to reverberate through the castle. Age, decay, despair: all were stripped back before the force of the receding enchantment. Remus was seized with a great cold, then a great heat, before his vision was blurred by a pearlescent light. The last thing he heard before the final vestiges of the enchantment were stripped away was a shriek from the doorway, from a voice that could only belong to Mrs Potts.

“Thank _God_ and praise the merciful heavens! They’ve finally figured it out!”


End file.
